Welcome to this week’s issue of Talent Edge Weekly—the weekly newsletter for human resources practitioners, bringing together insights about work, the workplace, and the workforce from various sources.

If you find value in this issue or any of its resources, please share them with your network by using the social media icons at the top of the newsletter.

Have a great week, and I look forward to sharing more ideas in next week’s Edge!

Brian 

Brian Heger is a human resources practitioner with a Fortune 150 organization and has responsibilities for Strategic Talent and Workforce Planning. To connect with Brian on Linkedin, click here.

THIS WEEK'S CONTENT

• New CHRO Playbook: Getting Off to a Strong Start as a New Chief Human Resources Officer | Spencer Stuart | Covers an 8-point plan for accelerating the transition of newly appointed CHROs.

• It’s Time to Rethink Job Descriptions for the Digital Era | Harvard Business Review | Shares ideas for reimagining how to adjust job titles and descriptions to better fit today’s business environment.

• Revitalized Vision for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Workforce | World Economic Forum and Mercer | Provides a comprehensive overview of steps firms can implement to improve DEI. I share bonus materials to help measure the 'Inclusion' component of DEI.

• Remote, Office, or Hybrid? Employee Preferences for Post-Pandemic Work Arrangements | The Conference Board of Canada | Reveals employees' preferences for office, remote, or hybrid work, and shares factors that influence those preferences.

• Podcast: Psychological Safety in Theory and In Practice | The Anxious Achiever Podcast | A 55-minute podcast where Amy Edmondson (Harvard Business School professor) and Christopher Yates (Ford Motor Company's Chief Talent Officer) share ideas for building a culture of psychological safety.

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

New CHRO Playbook: Getting Off to a Strong Start as a New Chief Human Resources Officer | Spencer Stuart

Several Chief HR Officer (CHRO) appointments have been made in organizations over the past few months. In my own “eyeball analysis” of newly announced CHROs during the last 45 days, I’ve counted at least 250 appointments. As CHROs transition into their new roles, this resource helps them gain momentum through an eight-point plan. The eight points are also displayed on a 114-day timeline, with 14 days devoted to pre-start activities. The eight include: 1) Prepare yourself during the countdown, 2) Align expectations, 3) Shape your human resources team, 4) Craft your strategic agenda, 5) Start transforming culture, 6) Manage your boss, 7) Communicate, and 8) Avoid common pitfalls. Regarding common pitfalls to avoid, one of them is failing to connect early with board members about C-suite succession and the newly appointed CHRO’s role in navigating this for the organization. And with many boards taking an increased interest in workplace issues beyond succession, CHROs can expand these early conversations to include other topics. As a bonus resource, I am resharing a Deloitte article, The Workforce Takes Center Stage: The Board’s Evolving Role, which includes 14 questions that Boards are asking concerning the workforce.

It’s Time to Rethink Job Descriptions for the Digital Era | Harvard Business Review 

Job titles and descriptions have been the cornerstone of virtually every talent practice—from workforce planning, recruiting, hiring, compensation, and learning and development. But as work continues to transform and become less predictable, there is growing agreement that organizing work into a fixed set of tasks and responsibilities (jobs) can have diminished practical value for talent management. This article provides ideas for reimagining how to adjust job titles and descriptions to better fit today’s business environment. It gives a few examples of how traditional job titles and descriptions can be expanded to be more flexible and broader in scope to accommodate the evolving nature of work. As firms attempt to organize work beyond the constraints of job titles and descriptions, they can refer to a Deloitte article, Beyond the Job: Developing New Work Models. The article recommends firms “organize work by creating very broad commitments to problems to be solved, outcomes to be achieved, or new sources of value to be created, essentially providing guardrails for workers in terms of the broad “what” of work but giving them the freedom and autonomy to choose the “how.” While such an approach can seem daunting, it can unlock workforce capacity and drive organizational value.

A Revitalized Vision for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the Workforce | World Economic Forum and Mercer 

Various reports on 2022 workplace and workforce priorities, such as McLean & Company, Glassdoor, and Josh Bersin, continue to rank Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) as a top business imperative. But as noted in this 23-page white paper, “while diversity has been the dominant focus for many organizations, equity and inclusion have risen up the list of priorities over the past few years.” This paper provides a comprehensive overview of steps that companies can implement to improve DEI for their workforce. Page 7 discusses aspects of an inclusive environment: giving all stakeholders a sense of belonging, while providing systems that encourage them to share information and participate in decision-making. And, Figure 1 shows 12 components of an inclusive workforce, ranging from gender expression, level of health, social origin, and parental background. As firms seek to drive meaningful progress in fostering an inclusive workforce, it is critical to measure the impact of their efforts. With this goal in mind, I am resharing a 63-page ADP Research Institute report, Measuring the “I” in DEI, which includes a 12-item index for measuring employees’ sentiment of inclusion. Similarly, page 21 of the November Gartner’s HR Leader’s Monthly contains examples of Gartner’s Inclusion Index.  

Remote, Office, or Hybrid? Employee Preferences for Post-Pandemic Work Arrangements | The Conference Board of Canada 

This newly released 39-page paper reveals employee preferences for office, remote, or hybrid work in a post-pandemic environment and shares factors influencing those preferences. It found that employee preferences vary widely along the virtual–office work continuum. The continuum is based on the number of days workers prefer to work from home, ranging from 0 to 5. On the one end of the continuum (0 days per week) are those employees (23%) who want to return to full-time work at the office. At the other end are those (28%) who want to work remotely 5 days per week. On average, employees in this sample would like to spend half of their time working at home and half at the office. Table 3 on page 9 touches on how employees preferences for different work arrangements are in part determined by where workers fall on a work-life interface continuum: 1) integrators are those who blur work and family boundaries (e.g., work and family role performance is not tied to a specific time and place) and are more likely to prefer remote work. 2) segmentors strive to preserve clear lines of distinction between work and family and utilize the "office" as one way to achieve that goal. While the population surveyed is limited to 10k+ employees from across Canada, the report provides one reference for ideas as firms develop remote work and hybrid work strategies.

Podcast: Psychological Safety in Theory and In Practice | The Anxious Achiever Podcast 

Psychological safety (PS) in the workplace is an increasingly prominent term as firms seek to obtain the various benefits of a transparent culture. But since many factors affect PS (e.g., a person's experience with being candid at work, work relationships and dynamics, etc.), it can be challenging to foster PS. In this 55-minute podcast, host Morra Aarons-Mele speaks with Amy Edmondson (Harvard Business School professor) and Christopher Yates (Ford Motor Company's Chief Talent Officer) about ways to build a culture of PS. Amy mentions that "PS is not about being nice. It's not safe space. It's not a trigger free environment. It's not a guarantee that everything you do will get a round of applause." It is, however, "a sense of permission for candor. What it is, is the belief that you can be yourself. You can speak up, ask for help, disagree with an idea, admit a mistake and you won't be rejected or punished in some way." Both Amy and Chris share ideas for promoting PS in the workplace. Since leaders are catalysts for cultivating PS, this bonus article by McKinsey provides additional ideas for how leaders can role model PS behaviors and create the right climate, mindsets, and interactions that enable psychological safety. 

MOST SHARED RESOURCE FROM LAST WEEK

HR Predictions for 2022 | Josh Bersin | Shares 15 predictions for HR in 2022, including that talent intelligence and skills taxonomy will become the cornerstone of a firm’s people strategy.

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